You will be able to apply a simple rule that interrupts any scam before money or access changes hands.
Your phone rings while you're queueing for lunch. The caller says he's from your bank's fraud team and needs you to read out the one-time password that just arrived by SMS, so he can block a suspicious transaction. The queue is moving, the code is right there on your screen, and he sounds like he's trying to help you.
In the last lesson you saw that scams are timed and scripted to catch you when your attention is narrow. A rule you have already decided on is the answer to that, because it doesn't ask you to weigh things up in the moment. This lesson gives you that rule in four parts: trigger, stop, check and tell.
You don't need to be suspicious of every call and message. That would be exhausting, and you'd give up within a week. The rule switches on only when someone asks you for one of four things:
To move money, whether by bank transfer, PayNow, a card payment, buying gift cards or crypto, or handing cash to someone. To share a one-time password, the short code your bank or Singpass sends to confirm it's really you. Whoever has that code can act as you. To install an app, especially from a link rather than from your phone's official app store, or to let someone see or control your screen. To keep a secret, from your family, your bank or anyone else.
These four cover almost every way a scam turns into a loss. A message that asks for none of them can annoy you, but it can't take your money. A message that asks for any one of them gets the rest of the rule, however real it looks.
The second part is the hardest. When the trigger fires, you don't click, reply, pay or install while the other person is waiting on you. Hang up the call. Close the chat. Put the phone face down if you need to.
Scammers need you to act inside the conversation they control. Once you step out of it, the urgency they built starts to fade, and you get back the ten seconds of clear thinking the script was designed to take away. A genuine bank or agency can cope with you ending a call. The only person harmed by you stopping is the one who was trying to rush you.
It helps to have the words ready. Something like "I don't handle this over the phone, I'll call the bank myself" is enough. You don't owe a stranger an explanation, and you don't need to win an argument with them. If they push back, get angry or tell you that hanging up will make things worse, treat that as one more sign of a scam.
Once you've stopped, check whether the request was real. The rule here is strict: contact the organisation using details you find yourself, never the ones in the message or given by the caller.
A phone number in an SMS, a link in an email, or a "direct line" a caller reads out could all lead straight back to the scammer. Instead, use the number printed on the back of your bank card, the official website you type in yourself, or the organisation's official app. For anything that claims to be from the government, go to the agency's own website. The ScamShield website also lets you check whether a message matches a known scam and read the current scam alerts.
Module 2 goes deeper on this, including lesson 2.3, Verify by calling back on a number you found yourself. For now, remember the direction of travel: you contact them, on a channel you chose.
The last part is to tell someone before you act. A spouse, a parent, a friend, a colleague at the next desk. Say what the message or call wants you to do, out loud, in plain words.
This works for two reasons. First, it breaks the secrecy lever, which only works while you're alone with the scammer. Second, hearing yourself say "a man on the phone wants me to move my savings into a new account to keep them safe" often makes the problem obvious in a way that reading the message did not. The other person is also calm, rested and outside the story, which you might not be.
Here is an illustration. Arjun gets a WhatsApp message from someone using his sister's photo, saying she's lost her phone and needs S$800 sent to a friend's account tonight. That's a request to move money, so the trigger fires. He stops and doesn't reply. He checks by calling his sister on the number already saved in his contacts, and she picks up, confused. He tells his family group chat, and two cousins say they got the same message an hour earlier.
The rule only helps if it comes to mind under pressure. A short version in words that sound like you is far easier to recall than the four headings above, so it's worth a few minutes to find your own phrasing before the next suspicious call arrives.
Write the stop-and-check rule on a card or phone note in your own words and share it with one family member.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).